You may want to be sitting down before you read this, but if you are on public transport/in bed/ensconced in that antique armchair, you might prefer to stand up. We are, apparently, in the grip of a bedbug epidemic. David Cain, who runs
Bed-Bugs.co.uk, a dedicated bedbug obliteration service, says infestations have gone up by 500% in the last year.

The little bloodsuckers formally known as Cimex lectularius can live for up to 18 months and go for a year between feeds. They can live in mattresses, paperwork and books, and if your neighbour has an infestation, they can march through cracks in your wall. You can pick them up from public transport, or at the office, and they will live in your clothes, happily nesting in seams and pockets. Suddenly vintage clothes don't seem so appealing.

Bedbugs like places where people are stationary - such as beds - where they can gorge on blood, and although the bites aren't life-threatening, they are itchy. Then there's the irritation and sleeplessness ...

The bedbug population explosion has occurred partly as a result of more international travel, dense housing and busy public transport. "They are a pest of exposure," says Cain. "The more people move around, the more risk they are of getting into contact with bedbugs."

Cain trained as a molecular biologist, then became a City analyst, before deciding that that life wasn't for him. When he started in pest control, he would do a couple of cases of bedbugs a week and now he deals with eight to 12 every day. In one of the worst recent cases, he estimated a house had 50,000 bedbugs.

So what can you do to help prevent them? "Once a month rotate your mattress and vacuum it. Regularly inspect the bed and the area around it for signs - little black marks on bedding or walls, eggshells and shed skins. If you think you've picked up bedbugs from outside, you're going to have to strip naked in your hall and wash your clothes at high temperatures. They are little devils."